


take me to the finish line

by any_open_eye



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, M/M, More Pairings to Come - Freeform, Rating will probably go up, like it's 2007
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23485912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/any_open_eye/pseuds/any_open_eye
Summary: “You weren’t pathetic,” Snake says. His hand rests on top of the blanket, above Hal’s chest. “You were a noncombatant with a gun in your face for the very first time.”Snake’s voice is as soft as the light, and for some reason that makes Hal’s eyes crowd with tears. It must be the drugs. “It wasn’t even a gun. It was a sword.”“All the more reason,” Snake says. “I hate swords.”
Relationships: Big Boss/Ocelot, Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i have a bullet-pointed list of Metal Gear character beats I want to hit, and really no way to unite them, so i'm posting drabbles like it's 2008 on LJ, because i'm a grown woman and i can do whatever i want.

snotacon, briefly nsfw, 

1. _daydream_

\--

Otacon sometimes writes his memoir in his head. Mostly in slow moments, in the shower or when he’s waiting for code to compile and he’s run out of anime to binge. He imagines the stage lights and the cameras, the interviewer’s overdone stage makeup and earnest expression as Otacon describes the beginning of his career as an international terror suspect. The fear and doubt of Shadow Moses, the brilliant clarity of forming philanthropy, the shame and betrayal of the incident at the Big Shell. The furtive years spent on the run, a different rat trap every other week, endless miles of scratchy talk radio, service station coffee, and Snake’s secondhand smoke. 

His fantasy interviewer’s eyes widen, and she leans closer. “Snake, yes. Tell us about your partner, Mr. Emmerich. Tell us about Solid Snake.” 

Otacon glances at the studio audience, slightly chagrined. “Where does one even start?” 

“Start with what he was like to live with. A cloned super-soldier. Weren’t you ever afraid for your safety?” 

“Well.” Otacon uncrosses and recrosses his legs. The audience hangs on his every word. “Snake was always very kind to me. Too kind, you could almost say.” 

“How so?” 

“He let me get away with bad habits. Not eating, barely sleeping, working until I dropped. As long as I kept my music down, he didn’t really care how I lived.” 

“It must have been frightening, though. Did he ever hurt you? Were you ever afraid for your life?” 

Here Otacon pauses, letting the tension build. “He didn’t hurt me, no. Not intentionally.” 

A low ripple moves over the crowd. This is what they really came to hear. 

“But…?” The interviewer prods. 

Otacon sighs. “But he had…dreams. Terrible nightmares. Especially in the darker months. We were on the run a lot, we’d often end up sharing beds. And sometimes in his dreams he couldn’t differentiate me from a common enemy.” He reaches his fingers around his neck, from carotid artery to collarbone. “The marks are faded now, of course, but you could see them for a long time.” 

A hush in the crowd. Otacon has them in his grasp. 

“When you say, you shared a bed…?” The interviewer trails off lasciviously. 

“Oh, well…” 

Sometimes, Otacon demurs. Tells the crowd that it really isn’t that kind of book, It has nothing to do with the grander story, as it were. 

Other times he affirms that no, they were two straight men, just friends. Just partners. Well, he was a straight man. He wasn’t so sure about Snake. In his head that always gets a laugh. 

Then there are the times that he gives the interviewer such lurid details that she stammers and blushes and cuts to commercial right away: sucking Dave’s dick on the highway, holing up in love nests for weeks at a time, fucking in the blood of their enemies. That always makes him laugh, to himself.

Otacon knows it’s a little sick to imagine this future; Snake out of the picture, him an international icon. Admired. Rewarded. Free to rake in the deserts of a nuclear crisis averted, a world saved. 

It will never happen, of course. He doesn’t particularly want it to. Just a thought experiment.


	2. Chapter 2

snotacon. injury, references to drunk sex. 

2 _giving in_

\--

Hal is as high as a kite and flat on his back the first time international terrorist Solid Snake holds him down and kisses him senseless. Snake doesn’t like taking Hal into the field, but sometimes it’s necessary—sometimes remote hacks won’t cut it. Hal needs direct access to the network. 

“A lot of these old places don’t have wifi yet,” he’d explained to Snake for what felt like the eightieth time. “I have to be on-site.” 

The bullet was standard military issue—full metal jacket, high velocity round, designed to incapacitate rather than kill. That’s probably the only reason Otacon keeps the leg. 

Half a decade building weapons systems and he’d never, ever been shot. The silencer means he only hears a pop, before his leg collapses beneath him. He drops his laptop. The screen cracks. He lets out a groan, Snake shouting in his ear over the codec, telling him to stay low, not to move, to put pressure on the wound. And to forget about his fucking computer. 

It only felt like pressure and numbness at first, spreading wetness, sticky and warm. 

“I—I thought I pissed myself.” Hal slurs against Snake’s neck, as he carries him to the mattress in the chilly bedroom. The only other furniture is the kitchen table, currently covered in bloody gauze and the remnant of Hal’s jeans, hacked off with Snake’s sharpest knife. The painkillers are finally beginning to kick in, and Hal feels like his head is brushing the ceiling he’s so high. 

“Heh.” Snake’s chest rumbles with laughter. His body seems to go on for ever, back impossibly broad where Hal is holding on. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

Hal blinks a few times, attempting to follow the thread of the conversation. He flushes. “Hey. Don’t remind me of how pathetic I was the first time we met, I’m injured.” 

Snake sets him on the bed as softly as he can. He sits down on the edge. In the light of the single bare bulb his cheeks look sunken. Has he been eating? Hal is usually the one with the bad habits, but—. 

“You weren’t pathetic,” Snake says. His hand rests on top of the blanket, above Hal’s chest. “You were a noncombatant with a gun in your face for the very first time.” 

Snake’s voice is as soft as the light, and for some reason that makes Hal’s eyes crowd with tears. It must be the drugs. “It wasn’t even a gun. It was a sword.” 

“All the more reason,” Snake says. “I hate swords.” 

Hal laughs. “You fight with blades all the time.” 

“Those are knives,” Snake says, with enough affront that Hal keeps laughing. “The technique is completely different, with a sword—.” He stops himself. “It’s not important right now. You don’t need to hear me talk your ear off.” 

“I like it when you talk, it doesn’t take my ear off.” The words just drift out of him. “I mean—you know what I mean. You have a nice voice.” Suddenly it’s far too hot under the scratchy blanket. “It’s possible I’m delirious.” 

All of Snake’s genuine smiles are a little bemused. Like he can’t quite believe there’s actually something worth smiling about. 

“I’ve been told I sound threatening,” he says, glancing up at the water-stained ceiling. “Master Miller—.” A muscle slides in his jaw. “—He used to tell me I had to be more charming to make up for the rasp.” 

“I’m sure the cigarettes haven’t helped.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Hal could honestly listen to that voice say anything, especially now, when he feels so warm and floaty. And the things Snake talks about are usually interesting, and if not interesting then they’re useful. Hal likes useful things. Likes being useful. A net positive in the world. To be a force of creation, rather than destruction, is all he really ever wanted for himself. 

He’s never going to be that, in the ned. The most he can do with Philanthropy is try to undo some of the damage he’s done, the evil he has unleashed on the world. Reduce his nuclear footprint back to zero. 

His thoughts are getting away from him. He’s getting tired. 

As usual, Snake reads the minute changes in his body language before Hal even realizes he’s made them. “I’ll let you sleep. If you need anything, I’ll be in—.” 

“Snake.” Hal makes a grab for his wrist. Snake’s whole body goes tight. What instinct is he fighting right now, Hal wonders. Breaking his fingers? Going for his gun? 

He tries to come up with something to say, any excuse for keeping Snake here, rather than “don’t leave me alone.” But all that comes out is, “Do you ever think about that night in Alaska?” 

Snake has no visible tells, but right now Hal has a finger on his pulse. He feels it elevate. “Yeah, I do.” 

Hal wouldn’t have expected him to lie or play coy, but hearing him say it in that low rasp sends a wash of heat down his chest. But now he’s not sure how to follow it up. Yes, they both remember it, and yes, it wasn’t a dream. Now what? He’d blame the opiates for his lack of finesse but honestly, if he was sober he’d probably be worse. 

Snake is watching him, silent. Solid Snake is so outgoing with women, flirtatious and coy and just a little bit pushy. Hal knows Snake well enough now to realize much of that is as strategic as anything else he does in the field. People expect a heartbreaker, a James Bond, and he plays that role for them. He’d even played it for Hal a little when they’d met, to keep him calm and take his mind off the threat of certain death. 

He doesn’t do it anymore, but there are small, sneaking moments when Hal wishes he would. Being seduced is so much easier than asking. At least it always has been for Hal. Maybe he’s just afraid of what will happen when he gets what he wants. Success has never brought him anything good. 

“Kiss me.” It doesn’t sound like his voice. And when the warm brush of lips touches the side of his mouth, it doesn’t feel like his body. He makes a soft, hungry noise, and is surprised to hear Snake growl in return. And suddenly he is being kissed so thoroughly that he can barely breathe. Hot and deep, like a heartbeat he feels through his entire body. Snake smells like blood—Hal’s blood—and the scrape of his callused fingers make him think of what else those hands have done. Snapped necks, pulled triggers. Cleaned his wounds. Disarmed a nuclear platformed. 

Held Hal’s hips down against a ratty old sofa in a drafty cabin on the tundra while he came down his throat, both of them nearly too drunk to stand. 

It was always going to be the two of them against the world. They’d known this going in. Two lonely men trying to put back together a broken world that they helped to break. 

“Please,” Hal moans, not even sure what he’s asking for. 

Snake throws a leg over his waist, careful of his injury, holding himself up so they’re only touching the slightest bit, where he’s licking into Hal’s mouth. God, Hal must look like such a mess, sweaty and filthy, hair everywhere, pale from blood loss. He has no idea what Snake finds attractive about him right now, but when he tips his head back, Snake goes for his throat, sucking on his thrashing pulse. He’s hard in his sweatpants, and when Hal cups him he bucks into his touch. It jostles his leg and Hal hisses. 

Snake bites at his lower hip. “Shit. You’re gonna kill me.” 

“I’m the one who got shot.” Hal’s voice is high and full of holes. 

Snake’s eyes are huge in the dark. “When I saw you drop—.” He says it against Hal’s mouth—he can taste the words as much as he hears them. “—I thought he’d shot to kill. I thought you were gone. Fuck.” His voice breaks as cleanly as a piece of chalk snapped in half. 

“I’m not,” Hal says. “I’m right here.” 

Snake kisses him again. “You’re not coming out into the field with me from now. We’ll find another way.” 

“We can talk about it.” 

Snake’s fingers curl tight on the back of his neck, forcing Hal to look at him. “No. There’s nothing to talk about.” 

Hal knows he should fight back, but the command in Snake’s voice melts him against the pillow. The last thing he hears before he floats into the haze of painkillers is, “I’m not going to risk you, Hal. Not you.”


	3. Chapter 3

ocelot, violent imagery, sadism. 

3\. _entropy_

\--

Ocelot manages to make it to his quarters before it all falls apart. 

He slams the door behind him. His knees hit the ground. He’s shaking, overwhelmed by a bubbling cocktail of disgust and fascination. 

Snake. The American with the deep-set blue eyes and massive weapon of a body. Who had dispensed weapon’s advice even while he had his boot on Ocelot’s throat. Who had killed every highly trained operative sent after him. Naked Snake is a specter in Ocelot's dreams. Circling him, herding him. Ocelot doesn’t usually feel like prey, but the naked, burning hunger in that hunter’s eyes…

He’s been waking sweat-drenched and trembling, half-hard and unable to get back to sleep until he takes care of himself, one hand on his dick, the other wrapped around his revolver. 

When Volgin had called him into the interrogation room, he’d had no idea what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been Snake, all of that muscle, all of that power, suspended on a hook like a cut of meat. Reeking of blood and piss. The Snake in Ocelot’s head had taken the torture without a sound, like a man. In reality he screamed and bled, but he hadn’t broken. He had looked at Ocelot with eyes wet with tears but still blazing with defiance, even after one of those eyes had been taken away. 

_By me. By this gun._

Ocelot knows in that moment that he will never be the same.


	4. Chapter 4

snotacon, sfw 

4 _overture_

-  
Light hangs above the frozen lake in soft, swaying curtains. Eight months in Alaska and Otacon has never, ever seen the northern lights. 

“It’s beautiful,” he mutters. He immediately thinks about showing it to Sniper Wolf. Then he remembers that Sniper Wolf is dead, and he has his arms wrapped around her killer. 

During the first stage of the ride he’d tried to keep a polite distance between himself and Snake, but it’s so cold and he’s so tired, that after a while he’d just given up and buried his face in the curve of his shoulder. Back on the base Otacon had noticed Snake smelled of tobacco and old blood. Now he smells like nothing. All of Otacon’s senses have been snatched away by the wind, leeched from his body by the overwhelming cold. Before he moved up here, he’d never imagined that cold could feel like a living, breathing thing. A monster that wrapped you in in its coils and pulled you down under the surface. 

“You doing okay back there?” 

“Sure,” Otacon calls back. “A little chilly.” 

And he is okay. That’s the strangest part of all of this. He feels…alright. Not great. Not ready to face anything more strenuous than simply hanging on and letting the tide carry him. But the crushing impact of everything that’s happened over the last 36 hours—that hasn’t hit him yet. He knows it’s there, mounting like a tidal wave. But right now he breathes in the nothing-smell of Solid Snake and lets himself drift. 

“Don’t fall asleep.” Snakes voice floats back to him. 

“I won’t,” Otacon hears himself say. 

He does fall asleep later, though, under a pile of blankets in a narrow bed not meant for two people, Snake pressed up against him from behind, breathing even and deep in the dark room. Snake’s cabin has electricity, but the generator is busted and it’s too dark to fix it until morning. That’s what Snake had said. There’s only one bed. Makes sense to share body heat. 

This morning he’d woken up head engineer of the Shadow Moses research facility, and tonight he’s falling asleep in the arms of a hired killer. 

He doesn’t know why he’d followed Snake. Maybe one day he will be able to unravel it, but right now he looms too huge in his mind to imagine being away from him. 

Hal sleeps.


End file.
